Nicotine and Ink
by Manic Zombie Queen
Summary: Dr. Crane can't help but wonder if this sudden exposure of the maniac's soul is real or only a bluff. U/C


He closed his eyes slowly, blocking out the dark smoke filled room. Clove, nicotine, and that sickly sweet smell of an illegal drug wafted throughout the room, and an all too well known gas that Dr. Crane had perfected.

"My childhood? You want to hear about my childhood?" he laughed, grinning slightly.

Opening his eyes, he saw nothing at first except for white, white pearls falling to the ground. There had been a gunshot outside, and a young boy slowly slid from the shadows, watching Joe Chill mugging some rich family. He didn't know them, didn't know the son that stood there as the police slowly came, only looked at the deep red that fell from the two adults on the ground, and the pearls. He was only a child in this memory.

Eddy, as most of the people that lived with him and his mother, couldn't be more than seven as this scene occurred. His mother, Dahlia, was out at work, wearing only a maroon bustier, a leather mini skirt, and heels that made her legs appear as if they went on forever under fishnets. Eddy thought that those pearls, if he could get enough of them, would make a beautiful necklace for mommy dearest.

"My mother…. Was a drinker, and a gambler." His eyes were still closed, black pits in this lighting. "And she didn't like me much."

After hours of kneeling on the cold ground, grabbing at the ivory moons with grubby fingers, he had most of them. It took another hour to slowly hand string them onto a piece of string, smiling as he worked. She would be so proud.

"She enjoyed leaving me for hours, days on end in the grimy apartment, with no food and no way to entertain myself. I learned to kill rats, birds, anything that got in my area and eat them raw, skin, feathers and fur still on." He chuckled quietly under his breath, a sneer appearing on the red-smeared lips.

Dahlia's first reaction was first crying, then a hard slap to her child's face. She knew that they were worth a lot, and had assumed that he had stolen them. When the stammering boy pleaded with her, saying that he found them, she took the strand and pocketed them, before selling them for half the original price. She'd finally be able to pay off the sharks that knew that she owed them more than she was worth as a prostitute.

"She became deep with the sharks, and well…. One day mommy came home with bandages covering her face. And that wasn't fair in her eyes, no… when the bandages came off; there was a grin that went from one of her ears to the other. She had become a Black Dahlia. My inspiration is from that first night, when she pulled the .45 out of the closet and enough bullets to make an impressionable boy's jaw drop." Another chuckle, louder this time, it almost becoming his trademark laughter, before stopping suddenly.

"She took me to the underground world where she worked with me, shooting anyone she didn't like on the spot. I suppose that it was a sign that she had snapped but… she WAS my mother." He smiled, reminiscing.

Licking his lips, he crossed his legs, tilting his head as the doctor looked at him with utter and total terror. Even though he was in a straightjacket, this man was the most dangerous person in the city.

"We went down to the deepest, darkest area, where many years from then I'd be laughing at a ground of mobsters. She killed them all, except for one. He had his men grab us both, and they laughed as he slowly came up to me. There was a stench of whiskey on his breath, and a manic laugh deep in his throat."

'Why so serious, Eddy? You're the joker around here- why not a smile?" He was holding a pocket knife in one hand, my chin in the other.

'Let's put a smile on that face, just like your mother. Or didn't she tell you, Eddy?' He turned to Dahlia, laughing at her look of horror.

'Don't do this, Al. Please, for my sake.' She struggled against the two men who held her back, before crying as Al pressed the knife to Eddy's cheek.

'Your father wants to see a smile on that face, boy. You'd best oblige.'

"He put a smile on first my mother, then me. Her blood dripped slowly down the stairs, falling to the ground. And I will always remember that I hated my father, though he may be dead."

"Dr. Crane? There's a –uh- Mr. Bruce Wayne here to see you." The nurse startled the doctor, making him swear quietly and say to the other man "Let's continue this later today, hmm?"

"Whatever you say, doc. Whatever you say." The green haired man smiled under the heavy makeup, before laughing loudly as the heavy door sealed shut.

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Kay, so this is my first T.D.K. fanfiction! Please rate fairly, and if you want me to continue, please say so!

Thanks!

-M. Z. Q.


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